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Thursday, June 27, 2013

ALBANY, NY — Senators in the New York Legislature adjourned for the 2013 session without voting on a medical marijuana bill or addressing a bill that would have fixed loopholes in the state’s decades-old marijuana decriminalization law that allows police to arrest people for having marijuana in “public view.”

Assembly Bill 6716 and its identical companion Senate Bill 3105, would have decriminalized possessing up to 15 grams of marijuana in public view, while smoking in public would remain a misdemeanor. Under the state’s 1977 marijuana decriminalization law, private possession of up to 25 grams of marijuana is a non-criminal citation, punishable by a $100 fine. However, the possession of any amount of marijuana in “public view” has and will remain a criminal misdemeanor.

Assembly Bill 6357, the Compassionate Care Act, which would have allowed the medical use of marijuana by qualified patients in New York. This is the fourth time that the New York Assembly has passed medical marijuana legislation.